1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the mounting of a removable cartridge in an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to, a mounting support bracket for supporting a cartridge within a main body frame of an image forming apparatus, and an image forming apparatus employing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus may typically include one or more cartridges that are removable from the main body frame of the image forming apparatus to be replaced and/or replenished. For example, a cartridge may hold a supply of toner for developing electrostatic latent image formed on a surface of an image carrying body (or a photosensitive body), and may include, among other things, a developing roller, which supplies the toner to the image carrying body to develop the electrostatic latent image, and may or may not also include within the cartridge the photosensitive body itself. These cartridges are typically removable from the main housing of the image forming apparatus, for example, to be replaced and/or replenished when the supply of toner is spent, or to replace worn out components, for example, the developing roller and/or the photosensitive body.
One or more of the movable portions or components of the cartridge, for example, the image carrying body and/or the developing roller, are in operation required to move in certain controllable manner. For example, the developing roller and the image carrying body are typically made to rotate during operation. The rotational force is typically supplied from a source of motional force provided in the main housing of the image forming apparatus. The motional force from the source is transferred to the components within the cartridge through one or more gears provided in the cartridge housing. These gears may be engaged to, and thus are “driven” by, another gear or a set of gears provided in the main housing when the cartridge are installed in the image forming apparatus, and may become disengaged from the driving gear of the main housing when the cartridge is removed from the main housing of the image forming apparatus.
In a conventional image forming apparatus, a guide may be formed on the main body frame, along which a cartridge is guided into position during the mounting of the cartridge, and which may also support the cartridge in the mounted position within the main body frame. A separate bracket on which a driving gear or gears may be disposed is typically coupled to the main body frame for engagement with the driven gear(s) of the cartridge so that the driving force can be transmitted to, e.g., the image carrying body and/or the developing roller.
However, in a conventional image forming apparatus, the guide and the driving gears are provided on separate bodies, as described above, namely, e.g., the guide being formed on the main body frame while the driving gears being provided in a separate bracket. In this configuration, unfortunately, there may be a misalignment between the support bracket and the main body frame. For example, the mounting position of the bracket may be off, or over time the relative positions of the bracket and the main frame may shift. The misalignment, whatever its cause may be, may result in an improper engagement between the driving gear(s) and the respective driven gear(s) when the cartridge is guided by the guide into the mounted position.
In this case, since the driving force from the driving gears is not effectively transmitted to the driven gears, the operation of the cartridge, more particularly, the rotation of the image carrying body and/or the developing roller may be improperly performed, which in turn may result in inferior image quality.